How the Stories We Tell Change our Lives

“We are all storytellers,” writes Emily Esfahani Smith in her book The Power of Meaning: Crafting a Life That Matters (2017).  She goes on to say, “storytelling is how we make sense of our experiences and our identities.”   Narratives help us to put all the pieces of our experiences together into a unified whole that gives our lives meaning.

When we tell our stories, we make narrative choices and so the same experience could be talked about in many ways.  Smith cites psychologist Dan McAdams’ three decades of work in this field.  His research has found that people who tell stories that go from bad to good, what he calls “redemptive” stories, tend to contribute to society and look ahead for future generations.  In contrast, people who tell stories that go from good to bad, what McAdams calls “contamination” stories are less driven to contribute to society and younger people.  People who tell contamination stories are also more likely to be anxious or depressed and feel that their lives are less coherent than people who tell redemptive stories.  In the field of Narrative Therapy, therapists help clients to change how a story is told in order to gain more meaning and a sense of control over their lives. You can read more about this in an excerpt from The Power of Meaning at TED Ideas here.

I came across an example of this recently while listening to someone tell the story of their trip back from a holiday.  The speaker related three incidents that were near misses of disaster and then summed the story up by saying,” I wonder if there is a message there, with all those bad things happening?”  Her story went from a good holiday to bad things happening.  From my vantage point as the listener, it seemed to me that she had gone from bad things happening to a good outcome of no residual harm.  Some would have said that she had lucky escapes but she felt unlucky for coming so close to harm.  She felt anxious that maybe more bad things were on their way while I thought that maybe worrying wouldn`t be useful because bad things can happen and you can still be okay.

I was still thinking about these two kinds of narratives when I came across an article in the Toronto Metro newspaper about bike stands in the Bloordale district of Toronto.  Recently the Toronto City Council after much lobbying by local bicycle advocacy groups and groups like the David Suzuki Foundation, has created an experimental bike lane on the busy main artery of Bloor Street.  There has been a debate among business owners about how this will affect them.  Some say that if people can’t park their cars, their business will be affected negatively.  Others say that people on bicycles are more likely to stop and shop thus affecting some businesses positively.  In the midst of this experiment, a collaboration between the local business association and local students has created a new story.

Students from Bloor Collegiate Institute designed twenty, one-of-a-kind bike stands after researching the history of the area. For example, one student discovered that there used to be a circus located where Dufferin mall now stands.  Pictures of elephants parading along the street inspired the student to put an elephant on the bike stand. 

All twenty stands are related to a historical story of the area. Some of them are pictured here.  The stands were built by Jacqueline Fernandez, a grade 12 student at Contact Alternative School, out of rolled plate and flat bar steel.  The Bloordale business association funded the project.  Originally the idea came from someone who saw bike racks in other parts of the city that were painted in beautiful colours.

These bike stands tell many stories.  They tell stories of the past.  They tell the story of collaboration in the present.  They tell the story of a society transitioning through different modes of transportation.  The stands make it possible for people on bikes to feel welcomed since they have somewhere to lock their bikes up which can be surprisingly hard to find when a lot of people are biking.  They are also making a political point that the businesses are welcoming people on bikes and supporting bike culture instead of telling the angry narrative of what has been dubbed, the “war on cars”.  And the artwork makes them attractive, bringing beauty to a busy urban street.   

The students reached back into the past for good stories to tell today and into the future and they are taking an active part in shaping their community.  I can see how this kind of storytelling will be good for society and for future generations.  It is one of our new stories.